Battlereport: league match 1

My first opponent was a really pleasant and cool Norwegian guy, Magnus.

He plays a really awesome looking Chaos space marine list (Thousand Sons / Tzeentch).

His list is something like this:

Abaddon
Daemon prince with wings and lash
Greater daemon

3 Terminators with combi plasma in a Land raider
6 Thousand Sons with bolt sorcerer in a rhino.
5 Chaos marines with a meltagun and champion
5 Lesser daemons

3 Bikes with 2 meltaguns

6 Obliterators
Vindicator

The mission:

Primary: Kill points
Secondary: 4 Objectives
Tertiary: more than 600 VP difference difference

Deployment: Dawn of war.
Beginning roll: Magnus wins and choose to go first.

The battlefield

Pregame thoughts:

My deployment and my target priority would win me this game. Of that I were certain from the beginning. The chaos army has a limited number of shooting bases and could I take them out I could more or less at leisure take the army apart.
So obliterators and landraider first, vindicator, bikes and the two daemons second and the content of the rhinos third.


The mission and the deployment screwed alittle with me. Killpoints is never a good thing for me, I have 25 killpoints and the chaos army has 13. Also dawn of war is not really my thing. Even with nightfighting its too uncertain what will reach and what will not.

I would prefer to go second in most setups, since that would allow me to outdeploy my opponent from the beginning. I would be making sure that most of his shooting could not reach anything in his turn two.

Deployement:

Neither of us deployed anything. The greater and lesser daemons started in reserve ofcourse and so did my Reaver jetbikes.

Turn 1:

The Sons of Magnus rolls onto the board. The Land raider sits with a dominating position in the center and the Obliterators walks towards a central ruin.
 Also the vindicator and the rhino with his single champion for greater daemon summoning deploys to his left. This as we will see later turns out to be a mistake.

Hurtling onto the battlefield comes the skimmerfleet of the Dark eldars.
I choose to come on full speed with everything and to refuse the chaos forces a flank. The two raiders with wyches in them goes full speed up the tableedge, which is my first mistake. They are withing range of both the raider and one group of Obliterators. Otherwise a good deployment that force the chaos forces to come full speed towards me.

Turn 2:

None of the reserves come in.
The Thousand Sons move up towards the eldar army. The bikes turbo boost behind the building and vindicator and both rhinos go full speed. The daemon prince hides behind a rhino. The Obliterator group furthest away from the dark eldar line run.

The result of the 1K sons shooting

The shooting from three oblitertors and the landraider that pivotted on the spot wrecks the Succubus´ride and immobilizes then other raider. Ok shooting considering he only har two firebases.

None of the dark eldar reserves arrive, and having weathered the first round of chaos shooting, the skimmers moved up and prepared to unload on the chaos lines.

The shooting goes well for the Dark eldars. The landraider loose both of its lascannons, the daemonprince is wiped out of excistense and one group of obliterators are killed outright.

Lascannons begone!

Daemon prince disappears in a puff of smoke!

Thats five lascannons less to worry about.

Turn 3:

This round both the daemon reserves arrive. The greater daemon is still quite a bit away from my dark eldar lines which I also factored into my deployment.

The bikes and the landraider hurl themself towards the dark eldars. The rhino with the bolt sorcerer in it sneaks outside cover to get a clear line of sight. The remaining forces move up in support of their forward elements.
The three terminators deploy out of the Land raider to unload their combi-plasma on a Venom.

The bolt manages to miss on the to hit roll and the 6 combi-plasma shots all hit but every single result on the attempt to penetrate rolls a one or a two. So not a single result.
To compensate alittle, the obliterators explode a ravager, the melta bikes blow up a Venom and the warriors inside are pinned.

On the dark eldar turn both Reaver squads decides to enter the battle. They go full speed 36 inches up the opposite side of the board as to where the battle is. I want them behind the remaning Obliterators and the Vindicator.

The dark eldars move around, without getting too much closer. The exception is Succubus and Wyches, who without regard for who might be sitting inside the raider runs screaming towards it.
The shooting is sort of meh.
An immobilized result on the rhino at the chaos backline, 3 dead bikes, a stunned vindicator and a greater daemon that manages to take 8 out of 9 saves on 4+.

During the assault phase the Succubus and her Wych girlfriends charge into the landraider. A single haywire grenade hits it, glance it and rolls a 6. The raider is now immobilized. Talk about a punch to the nads coming out of left field.

Turn 4:

Starting to be very short on units the Thousand Sons tries to gather kill points. Abaddon moves towards the pinned warrior squad. The terminator hides inside the immobilized landraider and the rhino with the chaos marines in it moves back to get out and rapidfire on the reaver jet bikes. Big bird (greater daemon) moves towards the dark eldars who are peppering the Obliterators.

Scattered shooting erupts and a single bike is killed by a boltgun. This results in the squad breaking and speeding back towards their own tableedge. The obliterators kill a Venom and the heavy bolter on the landraider puts a big fat hole in a wych. For the second time in a row the sorcerer with the bolt misses.

The lesser daemons charged into the wyches and somehow manages to get a tie. Abaddon makes mince meat of five warriors.

After wiping some warriors Abaddon is sitting right there for the shooting.

On the dark eldar turn four, the running reavers regrouped while the other reaver group turbo boosted up behind the rhino with the bolt sorcerer in it. I would try to surround it with the bikes and warriors and maybe wreck it to death. Always fun when your opponent cant deploy anything out of a wrecked vehicle.

Again the Venom and Ravager fleet moved around in their firing line to get clear shots on their choosen targets.

Abaddon was taken down by concentrated blaster and splintercannons fire, but Big bird managed to stick in there and not go back to the warp yet.

In the assault phase the Succubus finally managed to wipe the lesser daemons. The five wyches who were on their own assaulted the immobilized Land raider and managed to score 3 penetrating and 1 glancing hit with their haywire grenades. The Landraider wrecked and the single Terminator inside were forced out.

Turn 5:

 (I forgot to take picutres after chaos turn 5)

Being very limited in what they could do, chaos moved Big bird up to slap around a ravager. The rhino, with its chaos marines inside moved onto an objective to try and draw the secondary objective and the obliterators shot at and blew up a venom sitting in between alot of wyches. This resulted in nine wyches being wound by the explosion, but only a single one dying. Thank you pain token.
In the assault phase bigbird managed to stun a ravager with the single hit it got in.

The dark eldar forces again moved around to get clear lines of sight, but also moved in to contest all objectives held by chaos (that would be 1). The small group of wyches moved onto a single objective to make sure the secondary objective would go to them.

The dark eldar forces starts wrapping up the last Thousand Sons. After the shooting phase Bigbird is gone. The vindicator is blown up, nearly wiping out a trueborn squad in the process. The rhino with the bolt sorcerer in it is wrecked but unfortunately I had moved the reavers away and forgot to run a warrior squad behind the rhino before I shot at it. A single obliterator is killed leaving one.

The game ends after turn five on a roll of one. Probably for the best because on turn 6 the chaos marines would have been tabled.

Primary: Kill points
Dark eldar 11 - Chaos marines 7

Secondary: 4 Objectives
Dark eldar 1 - Chaos marines 0

Tertiary: more than 600 VP difference
Dark eldar 1450ish - Chaos marines 500ish



Battlepoitns total:
Dark eldar 20 - Chaos marines 0
 

Post game thoughts:

The game played out mostly as I wanted. I managed to outdeploy the chaos player and used my superior mobility to  choose when and where the shooting happened.
The chaos player was struggling uphill from the beginning with his older codex and the outcome was never in doubt. The only thing that could have messed me up with dice rolls.
 
Also. I couldnt for the life of me take a single flickerfield save during the entire game.